“Peter Pan”
Vienna State Ballet & Volksoper Wien
Volksoper Wien
Vienna, Austria
November 22, 2025
by Ilona Landgraf
Copyright © 2025 by Ilona Landgraf
Vienna’s Volksoper buzzed with excitement shortly before the performance of Vesna Orlić’s dance adaptation of Peter Pan. The great many children in the auditorium fell into eager silence when a rousing fanfare opened the ballet.
Orlić, leading ballet master of the Volksoper ensemble, began choreographing in 2006. For her 2019 Peter Pan, she was justifiably awarded Austria’s music theater prize. The production, which is based on James Matthew Barrie’s 1911 novel Peter and Wendy (known as Peter Pan), is witty, gripping, and great entertainment for the young and the old. I don’t know why the company’s former artistic director, Martin Schläpfer, shelved it. His successor, Alessandra Ferri, instantly decided on a revival.
Orlić’s version emulates the atmosphere of Walt Disney’s 1953 animated cartoon film Peter Pan. The gold font of the “Peter Pan” title in the opening credits was easily recognizable as classical Disney style. In typical Disney film manner, the closing credits rolled during the curtain calls. Some scenes in the ballet included film (showing Peter and the Darlings’ children’s flight “second to the right, and straight on till morning” toward Neverland, including a detour to Big Ben and a fog-shrouded landing on the island), but their settings didn’t copy Disney’s. Orlić decided on film music but against the existing one. Instead, she compiled a tailor-made score with Gerald C. Stocker. Both assembled film music from the 1930s to the early 1960s by Erich Wolfgang Korngold and Max Steiner (both Austria-born composers who emigrated to America and rose to Hollywood fame) as well as Franz Waxmann, Miklós Rózsa, Bernhard Herrmann, and Leroy 
Anderson. It was played by the Vienna State Opera orchestra under Mikhail Agrest’s baton. Live music on stage intensified the acoustic vigor. The lost boys (portrayed by the Volksoper children’s choir) sang a polka by Guido Mancusi, the redskins of the Piccaninny tribe were accompanied by two percussionists (drumming a composition by Sebastian Brugner-Luiz), and guitarist Andrea Wild played flamenco tunes for the leader of the pirates, Captain Hook, to which he pirouetted on his wooden leg. Portentous tick-tack heralded—or faked—the approach of the crocodile (a life-sized, remote-controlled specimen). Thunderous cannon shots made the auditorium’s seats tremble.
Like a living photo album, black-and-white photos and miniature scenes summarized the Darlings’ family history at the beginning. Instead of the Newfoundland dog, Nana, a human nurse (Una Zubović) took care of the children, Wendy (Mila Schmidt), John (Gabriela Aime), and little Michael (Nicolò Antonioli). As a substitute, she sometimes made up and play-acted like a dog, adding to the overall chaos at the Darlings’ home. A life-sized cardboard cutout of Peter Pan represented the fairies the children loved.
Once the flustered parents (Kristina Ermolenok and Calogero Failla) left for a party, Peter Pan (Keisuke Nejime) and the fairy, Tinker Bell (Julia Köhler), flew through the invitingly huge window to search for Peter’s shadow (Robert Weithas). Peter, immediately acting like an athletic daredevil (a transparent shirt revealed his ripped torso), found it, but it refused to reunite (the shadow continued to live a life of his own at times). After Wendy stitched them together with her sewing skills, Peter coaxed the siblings to join him, and off they flew.
Neverland greeted them with a cannonball fired by the pirates. Maybe due to his white, frilled shirt and gray queue of hair (which, as we soon found out, was a wig), Captain Hook (László Benedek) reminded me of a crooked version of Mozart (costumes by Alexandra Burgstaller). Berrie characterized him as a great pirate, who “Like all great pirates, has a touch of the feminine in his dark nature,” which ran free when Hook felt unobserved, like when he powdered himself, put on a tiara, and poetically mimicked the dying swan. His chubby boatswain, Mr. Smee (Roman Chistyakov), exposed other flaws of his boss (a set of teeth, among others) while attending to Captain Hook’s bodily care. Although always subservient, he also committed treason when he handed Hook a hand grenade in the foam bath. It had an electrifying effect. Hook poked the air with his sword as if it were a needle, which undermined his image of a great fighter, and he took to his heels when the crocodile approached. Since Peter had fed it Hook’s hand, the brute was out to gobble the rest. Its approach spurred the pirates to paddle like hell, using all available equipment (even soup ladles).
None of the islanders allied with the pirates. The sirens (Ariel Daley, Kristina Ermolenok, and Tessa Magda) supported Peter and his boys. Although the redskins first kidnapped Peter’s boys, John and Michael (the latter always clutching his teddy), they made friends when they learned that Peter saved their leader, Tiger Lily (Tainá Ferreira Luiz), from the pirates. Tiger Lily and her brother (Felipe Vieira) spearheaded an Indian camp as amicable as a uniting festival. Multicolored outfits and hairstyles made them look like modern hippies. Feeling safe, no one noticed that the pirates snatched Tinker Bell from their midst. She had a petulant and snooty nature and couldn’t stand the friendship between Peter and Wendy, so she plotted against them from day one. Now revenge was hers. She revealed Peter’s hideout to the pirates, which enabled them to launch a poisoning 
attack. Thanks to a sudden change of mind, Tinker Bell prevented Peter’s death at the very last second by gulping the poison herself. “Fairies,” Barrie explained in the novel, “Have to be one thing or the other, because being so small they unfortunately have room for one feeling only at a time. Tink was not all bad: or, rather, she was all bad just now, but, on the other hand, sometimes she was all good.”
By repeatedly affirming his belief in fairies, Peter miraculously revived Tinker Bell, and upon her arousal, they kissed (the scene reminded me of the awakening of Princess Aurora).
In the meantime, Hook and his men celebrated the capture of the Darlings’ children and the lost boys. Plenty of booze had given their steps a boisterous spring but also turned their stomachs. After a fierce final battle, Peter and his comrades threw the pirates overboard. Although they paddled away in a cockleshell as quickly as possible, a distant burp hinted that the crocodile had a good meal. On board the pirates’ battered “Jolly Roger,” Wendy and her brothers sailed home, smoothed their parents’ marital quarrel, and fell asleep. Soon after, Peter flew in again, grabbed a sweater he had left behind, checked in on his friends, and disappeared into the night.
| Links: | Website of the Volksoper Wien | |
| Website of the Vienna State Ballet | ||
| “Peter Pan”—Trailer | ||
| “Peter Pan”—Rehearsals (2019) | ||
| Photos: | 1. | Ensemble, “Peter Pan” by Vesna Orlić, Vienna State Ballet/Volksoper Wien 2025 |
| 2. | Julia Köhler (Tinker Bell), “Peter Pan” by Vesna Orlić, Vienna State Ballet/Volksoper Wien 2025 |
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| 3. | Keisuke Nejime (Peter Pan), “Peter Pan” by Vesna Orlić, Vienna State Ballet/Volksoper Wien 2025 | |
| 4. | László Benedek (Captain Hook) and ensemble, “Peter Pan” by Vesna Orlić, Vienna State Ballet/Volksoper Wien 2025 | |
| 5. | László Benedek (Captain Hook), Felipe Vieira, and Olivia Poropat (Pirates); “Peter Pan” by Vesna Orlić, Vienna State Ballet/Volksoper Wien 2025 | |
| 6. | László Benedek (Captain Hook), Roman Chistyakov (Mr. Smee), and ensemble; “Peter Pan” by Vesna Orlić, Vienna State Ballet/Volksoper Wien 2025 | |
| 7. | Tainá Ferreira Luiz (Tiger Lily) and ensemble, “Peter Pan” by Vesna Orlić, Vienna State Ballet/Volksoper Wien 2025 | |
| 8. | Ensemble, “Peter Pan” by Vesna Orlić, Vienna State Ballet/Volksoper Wien 2025 | |
| 9. | Mila Schmidt (Wendy) and the children`s choir of the Volksoper Wien (Lost Boys), “Peter Pan” by Vesna Orlić, Vienna State Ballet/Volksoper Wien 2025 | |
| 10. | László Benedek (Captain Hook) and ensemble, “Peter Pan” by Vesna Orlić, Vienna State Ballet/Volksoper Wien 2025 | |
| 11. | Keisuke Nejime (Peter Pan), Roman Chistyakov (Mr. Smee), and ensemble; “Peter Pan” by Vesna Orlić, Vienna State Ballet/Volksoper Wien 2025 | |
| 12. | Calogero Failla (Mr. Darling) and Kristina Ermolenok (Mrs. Darling), “Peter Pan” by Vesna Orlić, Vienna State Ballet/Volksoper Wien 2025 | |
| 13. | Gabriele Aime (John), “Peter Pan” by Vesna Orlić, Vienna State Ballet/Volksoper Wien 2025 | |
| all photos © Ashley Taylor | ||
| Editing: | Kayla Kauffman |